September 8: Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

On September 8, 1957, less than a year before his death, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda delivered a landmark speech condemning nuclear weapons as an absolute evil and calling for their total elimination.

Addressing 50,000 youth at Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama Japan, he declared that day: “Although a movement calling for a ban on the testing of atomic or nuclear weapons has arisen around the world, it is my wish to go further, to attack the problem at its root. I want to expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons.”^[1]

President Toda wanted to communicate to the youth that a religious sense of purpose could not be fulfilled in isolation but must be part of a larger social and human mission. As such, he entrusted them with the responsibility to lead the nuclear abolition movement, while establishing a society where people value the supreme dignity of life.

In a message marking the 50th anniversary of President Toda’s declaration, Ikeda Sensei wrote: “Today, many people have given up on the possibility of nuclear abolition. But peace is always a competition between resignation and hope.”^[2]